On the other side of the 2024 Paris Olympics, Australian B-girl Rachael Gunn has become one of the most famous competitors. But that’s not because of a record or a gold medal – it’s because Raygun has become one of the internet’s newest villains in the last week.
Gunn is a 36-year-old lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney. She has a PhD in cultural studies and her research interests include the cultural politics of her own sport. She first got involved in breaking in 2008 and has been one of the top-ranked breakers in Australia since regional organisation AUSBreaking released its rankings in 2020.
She’s also become a global meme. Gunn’s performance at the Olympics, where she wore green and gold tracksuits and an Australian team polo shirt, quickly went viral as people compared her kangaroo-hopping moves to a child’s dancing. The craze that followed was comparable to the rise of other often-memed figures like Lin-Manuel Miranda or Ed Sheeran, only it was boosted by the hyper-visibility of the Olympics.
But the meme craze surrounding Gunn has paved the way not only for harassment and bullying, but also for misinformation. Raygun, the meme villain, is demanding a reckoning, and people have done just that: As her meme has gone viral, false, easily disproven claims about her qualification process and past have proliferated online.
Raygun memes were rooted in both ridicule and genuine criticism
The first wave of memes about Gunn was largely a mockery of her performance. Gunn lost all three of her round-robin matches at the Olympics to breakers from the United States, France, and Lithuania. Clips of her performance spread across social platforms like X (formerly Twitter), showing Gunn contorting her body on the venue floor.
Eventually, people also learned about Gunn’s academic background.
“When I found out she has a PhD in cultural studies with a focus on breakdancing culture, I was completely surprised,” said one Twitter user, later clarifying that the comment was not intended as an insult.
Gunn’s personal experiences in breakdancing inform her own research, and in 2023 she even published a paper on the “sportification” of breakdancing through its inclusion in the Olympics. But as a white woman, she finds it exciting that she has become the most prominent face of a sport that was created by black and brown people, even if it wasn’t necessarily of her own volition.
Baltimore Banner columnist Leslie Gray Streeter wrote that Gunn’s performance at the Olympics was “not only shocking but also derogatory.”
The ridicule turned into misinformation as people questioned the legitimacy of Raygun’s qualifications
On August 11, two days after Gunn’s competition in Paris, a petition was posted on Change.org titled “Holding Raygun Rachel Gunn and Anna Mears Accountable for Unethical Behavior in Olympic Selection.” The petition, posted anonymously by “Someone Who Hates Corruption,” accuses Gunn of “creating her own governing body,” manipulating her qualifying process, and denying underprivileged dancers funding to compete. She also suggested that her husband and coach Samuel Free may have served as a judge in her qualifying competition.
None of this is true. Gunn’s qualifying event, the 2023 WDSF Oceania Breaking Championship, was organized by AUSBreaking. Gunn did not found that organization, nor was she ever involved in its management. Her husband, Free, was not one of the listed judges for the event. And the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) said in a statement on Thursday that Gunn “bears no responsibility for any funding decisions in her sport.”
Others have shared screenshots of satirical social media posts as if they were fact, including a screenshot from Facebook meme parody page The Sports Memory in which Raygun says she trained for “exactly 37 minutes” before the competition.
The now-removed Change.org petition served as a vehicle for spreading the claims on social media, prompting AOC to call for its removal in the statement linked above. On Thursday, a Change.org spokesperson told Business Insider in an email that after the petition was flagged for misinformation, it was reviewed against the platform’s community guidelines and ultimately removed.
According to an archived snapshot, the campaign had previously reached over 56,000 signatures.
Rachael Gun – “Raygun” – will compete in the 2023 WDSF Oceania Breaking Championships. Odd Anderson/AFP via Getty Images; Rebecca Zisser/BI
Gunn won her qualifying match honestly and has been an established breaker in the Australian community for years. But the memories of Gunn and her almost instant status as a villain fit the story: Only a woman who cheated her way into the Olympics could have pulled off the kind of performance the memes suggested.
As NBC reported in 2019, memes can dehumanize their victims. Even when compared to reasonable criticism written in good faith, the fact that the jokes came first may lend levity to the very serious allegations not only against Gunn, but also the athletic allegations that supported her participation in the Olympics.
Ultimately, Gunn has become the definitive story of breakdancing’s Olympic debut, the excitement surrounding her fueled by the exposure of the event itself. The sport will not be represented at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics (a decision made before the Paris Games), but that doesn’t mean it’s gone forever – perhaps it will get another chance at the 2032 Brisbane Games, back on Raygun’s home turf.
And what about Gunn herself? In a video posted to Instagram on Thursday, the athlete said she was going on an already planned vacation to Europe. Sports organizations such as AUSBreaking and the Australian Olympic Committee have lobbied to debunk the malicious claims about her breakdancing career.
It’s currently unclear what the future of this career will hold. But the internet is evolving quickly – and hopefully Raygun’s status as a conspiracy figure and internet villain will evolve as well.
